


I Won't Spare You

by Hymn



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, Rated for strong language, also coercion, and kurogane being kurogane, mildly sexual??, set right at the beginning of infinity, some violence, spoilers for acid tokyo arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-28
Updated: 2007-08-28
Packaged: 2019-02-28 14:31:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13273452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hymn/pseuds/Hymn
Summary: Fai is really stupid sometimes, but luckily, Kurogane is hard headed enough to counteract it.





	I Won't Spare You

**Author's Note:**

> backdated work, no edits, lemme know if i should tag for something

They treated Sakura differently from the rest of them, but that was only to be expected. It wasn’t just that Sakura moved and acted like royalty – Fai did that as well, to an extent – but more that she had given up such a large piece of herself to them, and everyone there had seen how much it hurt, and how she did it anyway. She had paid the price for their stupidity.

And then she had tilted her chin up, and Kurogane found that he liked this princess more than ever, as she became more and more herself. “I will go,” Sakura said, and the people in this Tokyo found new respect for her, when they’d already loved her for what she’d given them.

Eventually, though, when their doctor was looking after a hurt and broken but quietly, fiercely satisfied Sakura, Kusanagi had found Kurogane and this new Syaoran and Fai. His large frame took up the entire doorway, and he scratched at the back of his head with an amiable, sheepish look.

“Uh. Sorry, guys. It’s been kind of crazy, but I bet you’d probably like a change of clothes, huh?”

Kurogane snorted, glaring down at the tatters of his other world clothing. Syaoran nodded, and said, “Thank you. I would…very much so like to get out of these clothes.” His hand flittered over the insignia on his chest, and Kurogane, keen-eyed, saw the emotion skitter through his eyes, and relaxed, just a little more.

“And for me as well,” Fai said with a smile. Kurogane eyed it carefully. It…wasn’t the same as it used to be, not quite. “I’m afraid Sakura-chan bled quite a lot on me.”

Kusanagi smiled back, and said, “That’s quite a princess you’ve got there. It’s a pity to lose you guys; we could use strength like yours.”

Syaoran shook his head, and Kurogane let Fai answer for them: “Not quite. What you need is to heal. You don’t need us for that.”

Kusanagi laughed a little, and admitted that was true. Then he left, and came back with a change of clothes for all of them, black pants and black shirts and some boots and gloves, too. “Thanks,” Kurogane said, and then turned to the kid. He didn’t bother to sugarcoat it, just told him: “I need you to leave.”

Syaoran paused, his clothes gripped in his hands, his eyes down on the ground, mouth calm but not happy. He nodded, and left.

“I don’t think he’s going to eat you, Kurogane. The one that does that already ran away,” Fai said with a quiet, wicked kind of amusement. “I’m sure you can get changed in front of him.”

“Shut up,” Kurogane said. He didn’t like it when Fai called him by name properly. It felt unnatural, and like Kurogane had lost something very important. He gritted his teeth, and shoved off the shreds of his old shirt and tie. “You need to eat, and he didn’t need to stay for it.”

“…Kurogane.”

“We can’t afford for you to be weak,” said Kurogane ruthlessly. “And there’s no telling what we’ll walk straight into, no telling if I’ll have the chance to open a vein for you at our convenience once we leave here.” Kurogane didn’t have any handy claws, but the gear that Kusanagi had brought with him had come complete with knives, and one crossbow.

Fai didn’t say anything, but he also didn’t run; he just sat there, not quite looking at Kurogane, a faint smile on his face. Then Kurogane took the knife, and pressed it to his inner elbow. It wouldn’t do for his arm to weaken overly much from making the cut in the same place. The blood came quicker than Kurogane expected, and Kurogane stared at the rivulet dripping steadily down his arm, realizing that he was more preoccupied than he thought: worried about the princess, and the kid – both kids – and, especially, Fai.

“Drink,” he growled, pressing his knees to the bed Fai was sitting on, comfortable between Fai’s legs, and intensely aware of how intimate this was. Fai gave him a look beneath his fringe, and it was so odd seeing only one blue eye; Kurogane gritted his teeth, and held his arm up higher, next to Fai’s face. “Do it.”

“Your bedroom manner,” Fai told him in a quiet murmur, as his cool, capable hands carefully cradled Kurogane’s arm, as he turned, and breathed in the smell of blood, “is appalling.” He smiled, a shadow of humor across his face, before he leaned into Kurogane’s cut, which was already making a mess, all over Kurogane’s arm, over Fai’s already bloody clothes, and the tattered bedspread.

Kurogane took in a sharp breath, and held very still the entire time Fai’s mouth was on him.

*

That’s how it went at first: Fai sort of accepting and going with it, better than Kurogane expected. So of course Kurogane was immediately suspicious, and of course, those suspicions were confirmed.

As soon as they got settled into this new world, the one where they wore collars and decimated enemies as a game for a nameless, faceless crowd, Fai got it into his stupid flighty head not to drink Kurogane's blood. There had been a very loud argument, and Kurogane may have possibly left a hole in one of the walls at the end of it, but Fai just smiled, and refused. It was really annoying, because Kurogane got into the habit of slitting a wrist every time he was in the same area as Fai, and keeping it open until Fai managed to run away.

It went on longer than Kurogane expected - he should have remembered how god damned stubborn the magician could be - until Syaoran started making worried faces at him every time they were near each other.

“Is…he going to be okay?” the kid asked, concern making his too-young face pinch in a too-old look. “I mean,” he added, like he needed an excuse to care, “we can’t afford to be weak, if we’re going to win.”

“That’s why we have the princess,” Kurogane had replied snidely, and then cuffed the kid gently on the back of his head. “He’ll be fine. I’ll make damned sure of it.”

Nodding, Syaoran hesitated, and Kurogane waited. The kid needed to learn to stop looking away, as if afraid to stare them in the eye in case they saw him, instead of his clone, and hated him for it. “Don’t. Kill yourself doing it, though,” Syaoran muttered, and peeked a look up through his fringe. “You’re, uh, looking a little pale, lately.”

“Hmph,” Kurogane said, narrowing his eyes and not-quite smiling. “I can take care of myself.”

They only managed to keep it from Sakura because she was so preoccupied, hidden away from them in plain sight; she put up a good front, but her lies had nothing on the magicians. Kurogane understood having to do some things yourself, though – why else had he let her ride off alone into a land of acid and dust and monsters? – so he let her keep her own counsel, and he aided her as he was best suited. She wanted to win, so they would win, and that something else that she kept close to her heart and buried deep within her sad, determined eyes, was what brought them the victory they needed.

Eventually, though, it had to end, one way or another. Syaoran was right – he was losing too much blood; Fai was too hungry. He was practically nothing more than a liability on the game board anymore; it was Syaoran and Sakura who had carried them through this past time. Sakura’s steely determination and Syaoran’s equally firm will to do as she bid.

Besides, Kurogane hadn't willingly become E just to let Fai drop dead because of stupidity.

*

He cornered him in his room one night, when the kids were already asleep, Mokona tucked up next to Syaoran last Kurogane had checked.

It wasn't any trouble getting into Fai's room undetected: Kurogane was a ninja after all. It was the easiest thing to slip in, undetected; the easiest, and probably a bad idea, because Fai already didn't forgive him for so much - like caring whether he lived or died, the son of a bitch - seeing him like this would probably be especially taboo. They were out of other options by then, however.

Kurogane didn't let the door make a sound as he closed it, and instead he stood there, silent and motionless and practically invisible, and he watched Fai curled up on his covers, hands shaking from hunger, face just a shade away from crumpled, mouth tight and angry and determined. He wasn’t doing anything, was just sitting there, just barely hanging onto existence. His blindfold was lying discarded beside him, and his face was mostly in shadow, but not enough for Kurogane not to be able to see the hole where Fai's eye used to be

Finally, Kurogane spoke: "How," he growled, "Can you be such a mother fucking coward? Do you know how much it will break the Princess once she realizes you willingly wasted away before her eyes and she never noticed?"

Kurogane had started to move at the beginning of his low-voiced, hissed rant; sharp, dangerous movements over to the bed, onto it, crawling over to Fai, who stared at him as if blind in both eyes, mouth parted in shock and something like fear.

Fai licked his lips, and Kurogane tracked it for a moment, before ripping his gaze to Fai's pulse, which was hammering in his throat. His eye, too blue and slit pupiled, was beginning to shutter and hide whatever he was feeling. His fingers clenched in his sheets, and Kurogane pressed forward, crawling, hands and knees, until Fai hitched his breath in his throat and leaned back to stay away from Kurogane.

"Kurogane," Fai said, voice rough but almost nonchalant. "I didn't know we had a midnight rendezvous. I would have dressed up." His mouth tilted into what used to be such an easy smile, but was, in that moment, something barely patched together. Kurogane hadn't thought for one moment that it would hurt him this much to see Fai shaken down to his bones. As obnoxious as he had always found the blasé, confident blonde, he wanted him back.

"Don't be stupid," Kurogane said roughly, around a lump in his throat that shouldn't have been there. "You're going to eat something, even if it kills me." He paused, and then added darkly, "Of course. Then you would die, and that's what you want anyway, isn't it?"

Fai said nothing, and Kurogane growled, low and angry and desperate deep inside his stomach. He locked one arm against the bed, keeping him upright, his knees straddling Fai's sprawled legs, and with his other hand, he reached down and grabbed the long, pale golden hair that Fai had slowly been allowing to grow out. Fai made a small noise, his eyes narrowing, and Kurogane positively thrilled at seeing that much reaction.

Grinning, vicious and hungry for more, he tugged at the heavy, silken strands. "Well?" he asked, deliberately mean. "Are you going to kill me, Fai? Or," he pulled up, and Fai was too weak to stop him, too weak now to do anything but hiss and tighten his mouth and give him an angry, viciously blue eye - his own fault, Kurogane had no pity for him in that regard; Fai had allowed himself to become that weak.

He pressed Fai up, and arched his own neck, until he felt Fai's tight lips pressed against the cord in his neck. Kurogane swallowed hard; Fai's lips were cool and still slick from when the mage had licked them earlier. "Or," Kurogane continued, voice low and intimate and hot because he couldn't fucking help himself. "Are you going to suck me, and stay here with me? Stay here and live, and help me keep these fucking kids alive, too?"

“What?” Fai said with a laugh that sounded painful. “Is this a marriage proposal, Kurogane?”

Kurogane glared and said, “Don’t be an idiot. Well?”

But Fai didn't say anything, just smiled. It enraged Kurogane, and Kurogane tightened his fingers, and shook Fai's head until Fai opened his mouth on a gasp. "Damn you! Kurogane, just stop- Just leave me-"

"Oh, shut up," Kurogane snapped, hauled back onto his knees, never letting go of Fai's hair and taking petty pleasure in the way the pain of it twisted that thin elfin face. There was a blade tucked into his boots, and Kurogane reached back, pulled it out, and in the half-darkness of Fai's room, in the silence and the anger and the fear and the desperation, he pressed the sharp edge of the blade against his neck so that his blood welled up, spilled out, dripped down onto his collar and onto Fai and the bedspread.

"FUCK," Fai groaned, twisting beneath Kurogane; this time, Kurogane let Fai go and deliberately fell into him, let the blade fall unneeded to the floor beside the bed; because Fai's blue eye had gone feral and broken and red-limned. Fai caught Kurogane in his fall with greedy hands and a greedy mouth, and Kurogane shivered, and moaned quietly, and bared his neck further for this unbearable intimacy, this quiet, fierce, bitter sweet victory.


End file.
